Third Sunday of Advent 2005

Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks. 1 Thes. 5:16

The Third Sunday of Advent, like the third Sunday in Lent marks a certain pause in our celebration of the liturgical season. The church chooses to anticipate somewhat the great joy of the coming feast of Christmas, and so she moderates the penitential color to rose, something in between the purple of Advent in the white of Christmas. The first two readings as well as the responsorial Psalm clearly strike the note of joy that should accompany our preparation for the coming feast of the birth of our Savior: Isaiah cries out, "I rejoice heartily in the Lord," and St. Paul commands us to do the same, "rejoice always ... in all circumstances give thanks." The responsorial Psalm reinforces this theme by recalling the words of Mary herself from the Gospel of Luke, "my spirit rejoices in God my Savior," and our response perfectly echoes that theme, "my soul rejoices in my God."

The Gospel of John also encourages this rejoicing as it recalls the preparation for the Savior undertaken by John the Baptist, for our Gospel tells us that the Baptist came to prepare the way for the light of Christ, the Messiah. John the Evangelist connects this theme of light to the Baptist early in his prologue:

A man named John was sent from God. He came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

Light is almost always connected in our thinking with joy and rejoicing, and so the coming of this light into the world is certainly a cause for great rejoicing. Moreover, John the evangelist also tells us that this light coming into the world, the light whose coming John the Baptist was testifying to, is so great, so powerful, that all the darkness of this world cannot suppress or even be compared with this light, for "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." Moreover, this light that the two Johns proclaim is connected with the gift of a life that the One who is the light gives to us, a life that, in turn, is forevermore "the light of the whole human race." So today's liturgy pauses in this Advent season to remind us that our preparation, even though penitential in part, must be joyful, must keep before our minds and hearts the great gift that is coming, and has already come, the great gift of Christ, of the Life of God and the Light of God which enables us to reach our destiny in God's own life and light.

If we really believe this, how could we be anything but joyful, at least in the depths of our soul, even in the midst of the sorrows and difficulties of this life, for we know through faith that there is light coming to us from eternity, life coming to us from eternity, and that all of this has a certain beginning in the birth of our Savior.

Of course, joy in the midst of sorrow, at least as an interior peace, a peace that cannot be taken away by whatever the world throws at us, as the Lord himself promises us, is one of the things that the world can never understand. As with love, peace, hope and other such profoundly human realities, the world has a rather superficial understanding of what joy really is. Just as the world confuses an absence of conflict with peace, and emotional commitment with love and an earthly paradise with hope, so it also misunderstands joy. For so many people today, joy and rejoicing are connected with a kind of feverish, external activity. A worldly people cannot distinguish between rejoicing and revelry, joy and simply getting high emotionally in some way or another. The Oxford dictionary defines revelry as engaging in lively and noisy festivities, and its purpose, it further defines, is "gaining great pleasure." Now that is how most people today think of rejoicing - that's what it means to them, something like a boisterous New Year's eve party we see on television, or some other such gathering. The "joy" one experiences in such gatherings is not only superficial and purely emotional, but is also something that is very short lived, giving way to sadness or boredom as soon as the excitement dies down.

The joy spoken about in the Sacred Scriptures is something profoundly spiritual and interior, inherently long-lasting, yet fully capable of generating the deepest emotions at times. But this joy does not disappear when the emotions die down. This joy is not produced in the soul by some external cause, no matter how exciting. It truly is a gift; like love itself, it ultimately comes from another, and most profoundly it comes from God. The joy Jesus speaks about, and John his Apostle recalls, is a joy that comes from his presence, or even from anticipating his presence. That is why we can experience joy as we prepare for, anticipate, his coming at Christmas. That is why we can experience joy in preparing for and anticipating his coming in the Eucharist and other sacraments. That is why we can experience joy in awaiting his second coming. It is his presence and the anticipation of his coming again, even more wonderfully than before or right now, that fills the believer's heart with the joy no one can take from us.

Of course there are a number of presuppositions for our experiencing this joy at any time. The first presupposition is obviously faith, a living faith which means a faith by which we live our lives at every moment. Joy lasts as long as faith, and the depth of our joy depends upon the depth of our faith. But what makes faith truly deep are the other two gifts from God, the gift of hope and the gift of charity. We believe deeply only when we love deeply and when our hope is strong. If one ceases to hope that He will come, then one will have a difficult time believing in his presence here and now; and if one fails to love the one who is present yet who is also coming, fails to love Him as the very meaning of our lives, then both belief and joy will slowly or even quickly disappear.

Moreover, we must believe in him, hope in him and love him as our Savior, as the one who paid the price of our redemption with his own death, as the one who denied himself in order to affirm us and save us from eternal damnation. That is why a true preparation for Christmas or for Easter demands that we imitate him, imitate his love by denying ourselves, and affirming Him as the meaning and purpose of our lives. These seasons are penitential for a reason. We cannot really love the Lord, hope in the Lord, rejoice in the Lord unless we die in the Lord and rise in him. But while we are in the midst of this preparation, which has penitence as an essential though not exclusive element, we must continually make an effort to keep before our minds and hearts the source of our joy. we must the rejoice in the Lord always. That is critical for the Christian life.